


Absolute Penn

by ForASecondThereWedWon



Series: Oh my god, they were checkmates... [8]
Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: (again), Christmas Eve, F/M, Feelings Realization, Flirting, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Post-Canon, Reunions, Romantic Gestures, Sharing a Bed, blatant inclusion of historical context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27827203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForASecondThereWedWon/pseuds/ForASecondThereWedWon
Summary: On Christmas Eve, Beth remembers her mother's words about holiday travel and spontaneously departs for New York City.
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Series: Oh my god, they were checkmates... [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020483
Comments: 111
Kudos: 472





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Well, here I am, and Christmas is coming too/And I don’t intend to spend Christmas without you_ \- Margo Guryan

She hasn’t experienced a crush of human bodies like this since she was mobbed by elderly Russian men at a chess park. Thankfully, here, everyone is just passing through and their determination to navigate the crowd secures her anonymity. Nobody wants to shake her hand—they don’t even notice her. So many people are coughing and sniffling. Although it’s hot and she’s been regretting putting her heavy coat back on since the instant she stepped off the train, Beth tucks her face into the woolen collar to breathe more private, hopefully less germ-laden, air.

The suitcase in her hand collides with her own knees and those of what feels like hundreds of others as she weaves with the masses to escape the platform and stride down the comparative spaciousness of the concourse. She could’ve flown. She _should’ve_ flown. Why didn’t she fly? Beth tries to recall her reasoning as she cranes her neck to hunt for signs, something to tell her how to get out of here. Which way to the damn _fresh air_?

Right, right, right, because New York to Moscow (and the reverse) was a hellishly long trip and she hasn’t wanted to board a plane since. Planes are lonely things, without her mother sipping a Gibson and drawing her out of her thoughts every once in a while. Beth didn’t seek out a travel companion on the train that brought her to Penn Station either, but she had the landscape to watch as her passenger car shuddered northeast, not just sky. She’s seen an awful lot of sky in her life. Clouds are ghoulishly repetitive. Déjà fucking vu for the entire duration of an overcast flight.

Unfortunately, the train journey isn’t paying off in all the ways she anticipated. Alma’s assertion some years prior about the ease of traveling on Christmas is being disproven. Viciously. It’s either because Beth took the train on Christmas _Eve_ , thereby missing the golden travel window by a day, or this station doesn’t ever take a break from… _this_. She has nothing to compare it to; the last time she was in New York (the only time), she arrived by car. Benny’s car. And she has a good memory of inquiringly ruffling the parking tickets accumulated on his windshield as he shrugged it off—that’s what stopped her from driving.

Beth finds a bathroom and traps her suitcase between her feet as she splashes cold water on her face and the back of her neck. She’ll recommit herself to the task of finding an escape in a minute, but now that she’s _here_ , well, her competence is withdrawing inside herself and her nerves about the next part are rising. Where the competence was a hard shell—the ability to ask clearly and firmly for directions while wearing an invulnerable expression—the nerves are sweat and vapour. They rise and pass through her skin, leaving her damp, insubstantial. She didn’t tell Benny she’d be coming.

They’ve spoken. They’ve called and even narrowly missed one another in person when they both decided to drop in on the same tournament (to see friends, not to play) hours apart. After Moscow last winter, coming to New York to visit him felt like too grand a gesture. Of course, now she’s come anyway, and on Christmas Eve, which really can’t be categorized as less subtle. She obviously should’ve just done it right away. Waiting has led to something dramatic and undisguisably meaningful. _Fuck_. Beth snatches her suitcase off the floor and pushes back out into the swarm of travelers.

Even the oxygen seems harried. People jog and dodge and she can’t tell who’s trying to catch their train versus who’s just arrived in the city. At first glance, there’s an equal panic over everyone. But she starts to notice others: couples in love with the hands not holding luggage clasping each other’s; a group of young women, a little younger than her, maybe, wearing nice shoes and satiny skirts beneath their coats, red-cheeked and probably on their way to a Christmas party; children, too dizzied by the flurry to be cranky with the parents dragging them along by their mittened hands. Beth remembers her mother, Alice. She remembers her own sullen face in the bathroom mirror at Methuen, wishes she could take that girl’s hand and tug, bringing her into this moment, the two of them gliding amongst the trundling hoard, out into the snow she saw from the train window. The sun set on the way and the stuff sprinkled down throughout. She’s going to step outside into a city that looks like a postcard, and that’s what propels Beth up and out. Almost out.

He’s standing at the ticket counter.

“That much? Did I walk into Penn Station or NASA? I said _Kentucky_ , not the Moon. You can’t tell me Kentucky’s a popular destination. Who the hell wants to go to Kentucky for Christmas? Until Irving Berlin writes a song about it, nobody, that’s who. Nobody but me. Bullshit, fifty-three dollars. How ‘bout… twenty?”

Benny’s attempting to negotiate on his train fare. This is so _funny_ that Beth can temporarily compartmentalize that he’s buying a ticket. A ticket to Kentucky, from what she’s overheard. Smirking, she strolls over.

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” she says lightly, eyeing the way he’s shaking a twenty-dollar bill at the impassive ticket seller. His hand slaps to the counter as he twists to stare at her in shock.

“What are you doing here?”

She laughs and feels her cheeks flush from the naked longing on his face.

“I live alone, it’s Christmas Eve, I thought New York would be pretty, and, oh yeah, you’re here. Don’t tell me you’ve already promised the air mattress to someone else.”

Really, she’s impressed that he takes the time to shake his head as he reaches for her after slipping the money away, framing her face in his hands. Cold hands—a relief against her skin. He holds the pose and someone turns the volume down on the rest of the world. The noise of the station dims around them. Beth has time to lift her eyes to the snowflakes glittering as they melt on the brim of Benny’s hat. Then, she’s letting her lids fall as he slants his head and presses his mouth to hers with an intense finality. She’s convinced that she was always meeting him at the station, that the trip was agreed upon and not a snap decision she made after decorating her small tree with the glass ornaments she resurrected from the attic storage, neatly packed away by Alma each January, and realizing she didn’t have to miss him.

Maybe they’re unalike, or were; he was willing to miss her and she tossed god-knows-what into her suitcase and caught the next train that would bring her here. It could be temperament, or strategy, something in him that says _wait_ while her internal voice says _act_. What she knows it’s _not_ is a gaping disparity in feeling because they kiss with equal fervour. Benny’s face grows warm against hers and she shivers when his chilly fingertips curl around to the back of her neck.

Slowly, she recognizes that the ticket seller is asking them to move aside; their display is blocking the counter. She’s smiling when her lips part and her eyes open. He looks smug as he pries the suitcase from her hand and they shuffle out of line.

“Why, hello, Benny,” she says.

“Why, hello, Beth. Left it a little late, didn’t you?”

“ _Me_? At least I’m not just now getting in line to buy a ticket. Why didn’t you drive?”

“My car’s not the best in the snow. Or the ice. Or even the slush, really.”

“Sounds unsafe.”

“Oh, it is,” Benny agrees. His mouth hangs open for a second before his next words fill it in a rush, “Like the air mattress.”

Beth frowns.

“What’s wrong with the air mattress?”

“Very hazardous. Yeah, it’s, uh, made of some kind of toxic plastic. Any air that leaks out carries harmful gases.”

Playing along, she says, “Don’t worry. I don’t remember it ever deflating on me before.”

“Mmm,” he agrees, “but it’s been folded up awhile now. I don’t trust the seams. I think you’d better not sleep on it, just to be safe.”

“Well, I’m not sleeping on the floor.”

Benny grins.

“I’d never let you wake up Christmas morning on the floor, Harmon. Think better of me.”

He squeezes her shoulder and steers her out into the frosty New York night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have we had the ship name conversation? They're "Warmon" in my head.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exactly _one_ person requested a continuation of this fic and I am so weak.
> 
> You might've noticed that the notes on all of my _TQG_ works are lyrics from '60s songs. Chapter one of this fic is no exception, but now that I'm switching to Benny's POV for this chapter and not quoting another seasonal song, I can't stop you from imagining Bill Nighy singing "Christmas is All Around" as you read.

He keeps glancing at her. He can’t help it. The night’s deepening and she wears a black coat like she wants to seep into it, but the flame of red hair curling out from beneath her hat won’t let her. She’s too irregular, too particular, a different creature entirely—by appearance, anyway—from the photograph of her that is his favourite: in her white coat and hat, surprised in a Russian chess park after her big win. He’ll need to make sure that clipping is tucked away when they go back to his apartment. No reason to embarrass them both.

They only stopped in, earlier, to deposit her suitcase and hesitate awkwardly in the main space, watching each other with measuring looks, before Beth suggested they go out and Benny heartily agreed. The apartment is chilly and a little damp. Besides, the weight of her rightness in that scene kicked him in the chest like one of Saint Nick’s fucking reindeer; she stood there and her coat swirled around her knees as she turned to shoot him a smile that seemed to say, _This place hasn’t changed a bit_. It’s true. He’s been self-consciously stagnant without her.

Benny can’t help being proud of how they look as they march down the snowy sidewalk side by side. He admires her strength, shoulders back, chin lifted, as well as the confidence of his own stride when he’s with her. He peacocks for her, sure, but, in a way, he also owes this smug deportment to the assurance that he moves under her protection. They’re matching in their black outerwear. Long coats, dark hats. His with the wide brim, hers with the round whatever-its-called on top. He’s never felt so much like the king to Beth’s queen. From their resemblance to the chess pieces to the fact of her sliding across the map to join him in New York while he remained safely in position on his home square, they are the sentient forms of their wooden counterparts, like something from a children’s fairy tale.

“You’re staring,” she singsongs, not even having to look to know.

“Don’t bother commenting on it every time. I’m going to be doing it a _lot_.”

Now, she turns her head and he’s pleased that her mouth twitches up in response to his own smile before her gaze skates up to meet his eyes.

“It’s been too long.”

“It’s been as long as it’s been,” he counters.

No point dwelling or lying to themselves. Could they have seen each other sooner? Sure. There weren’t any real obstacles, just the sort of drifters’ schedules they could easily have elbowed into alignment if they were so inclined. And he’s wanted to. He’s had his sleeves pushed up and his arms ready for elbowing a dozen times over the past year. But, after Moscow, she belonged to so many people. His ego sulked. He’s still somebody, still _the_ Benny Watts when he saunters into a weekend open, so he leaned hard on that crutch until another, better version of himself yanked it out from under him and knocked him over the head with it so he’d see sense. That happened just a couple of hours ago and he ended up at the ticket counter in Penn Station, arguing his way towards a seat on a westbound train. God, she makes him rash. He’s as in love with her now as he was when he left her in line to board her flight to Paris, feeling it too profoundly not to be the first to say goodbye.

“Umm,” he hears Beth murmur when they’ve walked half a dozen blocks with neither of them stating an intended destination.

“We could get coffee.”

“Coffee?” She echoes him in her most doubtful tone.

“Yeah, you know, coffee. It’s dark, it’s hot, you drink it while you complain about not having been given breakfast.”

Beth cracks a smile and the air seems to sting Benny’s face slightly less.

“We could go somewhere nice,” she pipes up. “Watch people with their expensive dinners while we luxuriate over our cups of coffee.”

He likes this plan—it’s funny and beckons to him with its aura of intimacy—but they soon find, as they walk, that all of the imagined ‘nice’ places are closed. Right, it’s getting late on Christmas Eve and people have gone home to their families. Beth seems undeterred and he wants to tuck her into his side and his jacket, pool their warmth.

“Or anyplace,” she finally concedes. “I’m getting pretty cold.”

So is Benny, but he wasn’t going to be the first to say so. There’s a difference between throwing on his hat and coat and descending on the train station in a haste so single-minded that he hadn’t actually packed a bag and being prepared to walk for miles beneath a fine yet persistent snowfall.

The next diner on their route to nowhere special has a door that chimes when he hauls it open to let her pass ahead of him. When she sighs at the sudden warmth indoors, he wants to wrap his arms around her from behind and just… hold her. Beth Harmon, the kid from Kentucky. Now, Beth Harmon, who cleanly strips her hands of her gloves and moves with an elegance that a place like this has probably never seen. The place is fine, and when they sit, he shakes his head clear and recognizes the woman across the table from him as someone mercifully undivine. She had him fooled for a minute there.

“Coffee,” they both order.

Beth props her cheek in her hand.

“I wonder if she has someone to go home to,” she muses aloud. “For Christmas.”

“Who?”

She rolls her eyes at him and nods after the waitress.

“You’re so self-centered.”

“I am not,” he says, tugging at the lapels of his jacket as he gets comfortable in their snug booth. “I’m thinking about you.”

“What about me?”

Benny stares steadily into her wide-set, curious eyes. The longer he looks, the more he can feel his face betraying what he wants. She makes him prickly with the sensation of being always on his seat’s edge. Her sudden blush says she understands him and he feels uncertain about his transparency. The two of them, they don’t need a lot of words. In fact, they’ve held the majority of their conversations without them. The only time he’s ever told her how he feels was over the phone, which, he privately maintains, is the reason it wasn’t well-received. Speaking a foreign language would’ve been as useful as speaking at all. (Bar Russian, since they’re both up on it.) In person is where he can really express how he cares and maybe that doesn’t scare her anymore. After all, she’s here.

As the waitress sets their mugs in front of them, he pushes his hair back and grins at Beth noticing him noticing her watching the action. He knew exactly what she was communicating that night at the bar, the night she beat him, but he learned, during their time together in New York immediately after, that she also genuinely likes his hair.

He’s still warming his hands on the mug when Beth takes a quick, daring sip. With mischievous eyes, she slides over to the window on her coat and breathes on the glass. Benny observes her; there’s nothing to see outside, anyway, with the glow of the diner reflecting the interior on the panes. He wonders if she’ll write something in the small circle of fog she’s created, but she doesn’t—just watches it fade away.

She slides back and extracts a travel-size chess set from her coat pocket. When she rummaged swiftly through her suitcase before they set out, he hadn’t really thought about it. So, that’s what she was grabbing.

“You wanna play?” Beth asks with a challenging smile.

Benny folds his arms on the table and interlaces his fingers.

“Always.”

The pieces are too tiny to be conducive to speed chess—they just can’t move them deftly enough to slot them into the holes that keep them in place on their squares—but they play briskly and get their mugs refilled twice. He’s leaning forward and alive with the energy between them, him and her. When they finally pack up and pay, he catches her by surprise, buttoning her coat as she prods the chess set against her hip, trying to get it in the coat’s pocket. Her eyes flick up to his.

“Now what?” Beth asks.

He draws his eyebrows together in question, hands lingering on her coat.

“Benny, I just drank three cups of coffee. It’ll be a while before I can get to sleep.”

She tugs her hat on, then places his on his head when he bows it to her, holding her eyes.

“Well, first, we’ll go back to my apartment. When we get there, you can tell me if the walk, uh, gave you cold feet.” A smile flickers over his lips.

“Cold feet?” She’s incredulous, forever pushing back against him, and he thrives on it.

“Uh huh. And, if you can’t sleep, we’ll just stay awake.”

They head for the door and his fingers close around the handle.

“On Christmas Eve? What about Santa Claus?” she teases.

“I don’t care so much about him. My Christmas miracle didn’t come in a sleigh.” Benny ducks his head to whisper to Beth as she passes in front of him, back out onto the sidewalk. “She came by train.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you feel it in your fingers? Do you feel it in your _toes_?

Beth’s never experienced what seems to pass for a regular Christmas. On the way back from the coffee shop, she and Benny passed dark-windowed storefronts and she could see decorations inside—paper snowflakes taped to the glass, shining metal Santa heads with large beards and cherry-red cheeks. She had Alice’s erratic care, then Methuen’s acknowledgement of the day by forcing them to spend twice as much time in chapel. With Alma, this time of the year meant travel, purchases, and being pampered, all in hedonistic opposition to the orphanage’s idea of how to _correctly_ mark Christmas.

Where Beth hasn’t found herself on Christmas Eve is a claustrophobic, nightmarish bathroom, so this is a first. She finishes washing her hands and darts back to Benny’s bedroom, bare feet freezing on the concrete floor.

He’s still in bed, reading, and he looks at her when she closes the door behind her. With a quick smile, she crouches and wriggles back under his blankets. She managed to pack her pajama bottoms but not the top; he’s leant her a t-shirt and she stole his flimsy robe to wear over that when she got up to use the facilities. The blanket’s pulled to her chin as she shivers and shimmies the robe off and shoves it away. She shuffles closer to Benny and tilts her head to see the title of his book.

“You always did like the dry ones.”

“Deinkopf’s writing is straightforward, systematic. I appreciate that.”

“‘Straightforward.’” Beth huffs a laugh. “That’s kind. Try ‘plodding, dull, and uninspiring.’”

“He’s thorough.” Benny flips the page.

“He puts me to sleep. There’s an idea—why don’t you read it aloud?”

He snaps the Deinkopf shut and reaches his arm over his head to tuck the book against the wall, then turns to look at her. It’s one of his assessing looks, mouth open slightly as his gaze sweeps her face. Beth fixes her eyes on him.

“I got you something,” she says softly.

“What’s that?” He slides his face towards hers on the pillow.

“Cold feet.”

She finds his bare calves under the covers, where the legs of his pajama bottoms have ridden up, and presses her feet against him.

“Jesus _Christ_!”

Benny jerks away from her in the bed and Beth laughs hard. She actually starts to wonder whether she can laugh herself to warmth, because the hilarity is wracking through her.

“God, do you need socks?” He’s pushing his hair back as he regains his composure and she bites down on her lip to keep from laughing more. “My bed was supposed to be _warmer_ with you in it.”

“It’s not my fault. Your floor is like ice.”

“Welcome to winter in New York.”

“You could get a _rug_ , Benny. This isn’t a difficult problem to solve.”

“Just… come here,” he says in an exhausted tone, lifting his arm for her to roll over and press her back against his chest. “And don’t do that again.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“ _Beth_.”

“Alright, I _promise_. Happy?”

His agreement is a hum in her ear and a vibration against her back. He secures his arm around her and winds his legs through hers, avoiding her cold feet; she smiles to herself. Since the first night they spent together, she’s always been surprised by how _close_ Benny likes to stay. Touching isn’t enough—he has to be on top of her somehow, like he’s making sure he won’t lose track of her in his sleep. Though they’re not sleeping yet.

“I would’ve gotten you something, you know,” Beth says. “If this hadn’t been so last-minute.” She trails her fingertips along his forearm.

“What would you have gotten me?”

She snorts.

“I don’t know. You’re not supposed to _ask_ , just accept the gesture.”

“Well, then, thank you, Beth.”

“You’re welcome, Benny.”

He breathes deeply against her neck.

“I was kind of just thinking I was getting you _me_ , but I never even got to buy the ticket,” he grouses.

“The intention is very in character. Would that gift have come with an autographed copy of your book?”

“Do you need a second copy?”

She twists in his arms.

“You knew I had one?”

For an instinctual second, he dips his face towards her, then pauses before their noses can brush.

“I do now.”

“ _Ugh_ , why are you always looking for an advantage?”

He laughs but she’s still. Frowning. Watching.

“I had it with me,” Beth admits. “In Ohio. When we played.”

“So, when you were so blasé about mocking me—”

“Oh, you deserved that. You should’ve seen yourself with that poor student journalist. You were such an ass.”

“I’m sure he got over it. Like I was saying… when you, very condescendingly, told me you were going to prepare by reading my book, did you actually go back to your room and read it?”

She scoffs.

“That night? The night that you took my dignity and twenty dollars—

“Twenty-five.”

“—over speed chess? No,” Beth answers emphatically, stiff beneath his arm. “I did not stay up reading your book. You were the last person I could’ve stood to listen to, even in print.”

Though her volume and pitch have climbed with the remembered humiliation, he’s clearly struggling to suppress his smile, which irritates her.

“ _What_?”

“You bought my book. Thank you for the royalties.”

She groans and goes to roll away, but Benny kisses her.

“Don’t go,” he murmurs against her mouth.

Beth smiles.

“I wasn’t going to.”

Shifting, she flips to face him and they kiss easily, lazily. The heat finally reaches her feet. He slips a hand up her (his) shirt and presses the entire flat of it to the middle of her back. It feels, again, as though he’s trying not to lose her, pinning her between his chest and his palm like his bed is a board and he’s stalking her between mirrored rooks.

“You’re getting tired,” she notes as his lips move to her neck, his fingers delicately tracing her shoulder blade. “You wouldn’t say ‘don’t go’ if you weren’t.”

“But I _don’t_ want you to go.”

“I know. You’d still feel it if you were more awake. You just wouldn’t have said it.”

He draws back and looks at her critically. She thinks about the lamp he left on and who’ll have to get out of bed to turn it off. Honestly, she hopes he didn’t trust her vow not to use him as a human hot water bottle. Distrust will ensure she gets to keep her feet warm.

“I can say things out loud,” Benny states defensively.

“I know you can. Most of the time, you won’t _stop_ talking.”

Smiling, she runs a finger along the necklace at his throat. The shortest one, the only one he leaves on while he sleeps. He traps her hand under his. Suddenly, it’s a little lower, held over his heart.

“I can be straightforward,” he says.

She smirks.

“Like Deinkopf?”

“Like _you_.”

“Alright,” Beth allows, gaze skipping from one of his eyes to the other as they keep their faces inches apart. “What do you want to say?”

He blinks slowly with the tiredness he won’t own up to feeling. She feels his fingers flex on her back. Abruptly, she’s nervous. Maybe she shouldn’t have goaded him. Isn’t it easier when he only lets her into his heart when he’s tired or has a few states between them? Hasn’t it worked for her, only getting as far as his bed most of the times they’ve arranged intimacy like a famed chess sequence and attempted to play their way through it with a minimal number of exchanges? What happens if he puts a word to the explanation for why she’s not in Lexington and why looking at her too long makes him tongue-tied in the light of day?

Benny smiles.

“Merry. Christmas.”

She laughs because the delay in his speech is so ridiculous, so needlessly dramatic, and, even with that, insufficient to obscure the looming sentiment he’s doing a seriously bad job of hiding.

“You almost had me,” she confesses, an odd mix of reassured and relieved.

His expression grows arrogant.

“ _Almost_ had you? _Almost_?”

Beth giggles and allows him to crowd her onto her back. Benny’s face hovers above hers. He raises his eyebrows in question.

“Go ahead,” she dares, tipping her chin up. “I didn’t come all this way for coffee.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to those of you who requested more of this story! It's really the end this time lol As it was, I struggled to keep this chapter to its original T rating.


End file.
